I’ve been scanning the horizon of the design and engineering job market lately. And once you look past the noise, a very distinct pattern emerges.
I call it The Great UX Divide.
On one side, you have the “General Market” (roughly 50% of the available online job opportunities). These are your standard SaaS platforms, e-commerce sites, big social media & tech giants, and digital agencies. On the other side, you have the “High-Stakes Sectors” (roughly 45%). This is mostly made up of opportunities within the AI, FinTech, and Cybersecurity spaces, and a very tiny percentage (about 5%) coming from the evolving Web3 landscape.
The difference between them isn’t just about the industry labels. It is about Value and Novelty.
The Illusion of Abundance
If you look at the General Market, there is an abundance of roles. But if you look closer, you’ll notice that the level of new challenges is stagnant.
Let’s be honest: Most of the innovative design ideas in this space have already been invented. The problems are solved.
- We know how a shopping cart works.
- We know how a landing page converts.
- The breadcrumbs and step-indicators I helped pioneer in the mid-2000s? They are standard components now. You aren’t inventing them; you are just implementing them.
If you are looking for comfort, the General Market is fine. The salaries offered here are pretty decent by today’s standards. But if you are a designer or engineer hungry for novel solutions, or to have a chance at leaving your own mark on the digital landscape - problems that don’t have a playbook yet - you are looking in the wrong place.
The “Scary” Frontier
Then, there are the High-Stakes Sectors: AI, FinTech and Cybersecurity.
Historically, designers have stayed away from these. They feel cold. They feel complex. They feel “scary.” But that is exactly where the next round of design & innovation is going to happen.
- No one has established a universal UI pattern for “AI Uncertainty” — visually signaling when a system is guessing versus when it knows the truth.
- No one has perfectly solved the UX of a crypto wallet yet.
- No one has made complex cybersecurity protocols truly “human-friendly” yet.
- The visual language for “Trust” in a trustless Web3 environment is still being written.
This is the frontier. And the market knows it.
That is why you are seeing a massive shift in compensation. While the general market hovers around the $8k–$10k mark for senior roles, these High-Stakes sectors are more willing to invest between $12,000 to $20,000 a month for these senior-level designers and engineers. For these sectors, it’s not about hiring in numbers, but rather quality.
They aren’t paying for pretty pixels. They are paying for Risk Mitigation. They are paying for someone to come in and make the complex feel simple, because if a user gets confused here, they don’t just bounce — they lose money.
The Outsider’s Advantage
I’ll be the first to admit: I am not a finance expert. I am not a cryptographer. And I am most certainly not an expert in Artificial Intelligence. But I am realizing that my “outsider” status is actually my biggest asset.
These industries are full of insiders who understand the math but have forgotten the human. They need Translators. They need builders & artisans who can take their complex backend logic and wrap it in a layer of Clarity and Safety.
I am keeping my doors open to these industries not because I want to become a “fintech bro,” but because that is where the hardest problems are still waiting to be solved.
If you are tired of solving problems that already have answers, it might be time to look at the sectors that scare you.
This article is originally published on Medium, and has been featured by @design-bootcamp. You can read it here.
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